Categories
Evolution Intelligent design/creationism Religion Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Now this ought to be unintentionally hilarious

On May 5 New York City will witness what will perhaps be the most unintentionally hilarious spectacle of two fundamentalists making utter fools of themselves: MEDIA ADVISORY, April 26 /Christian Newswire/ — After ABC ran a story in January about hundreds of atheists videotaping themselves blaspheming the Holy Spirit, best-selling author Ray Comfort contacted the […]

Categories
Medicine Politics Science

Wiley & Sons: When “fair use” equals “no use”

This is the sort of thing that really irritates me. Shelley, over at Retrospectacle posted a rather nice analysis of a paper that appeared in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture entitled Natural volatile treatments increase free-radical scavenging capacity of strawberries and blackberries. She was skeptical about news reports and press releases […]

Categories
Cancer Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Peter Duesberg, chromosomal chaos, and cancer: An intriguing hypothesis argued poorly

A lot of readers (well, a couple, anyway) have been asking me about the recent article by Peter Duesberg in the most recent issue of Scientific American entitled Chromosomal Chaos and Cancer. I suppose it’s because I’m not only a cancer surgeon (which in and of itself is not enough to qualify me to comment […]

Categories
Bioethics Cancer Medicine Quackery Science

Dichloroacetate (DCA): A scientist’s worst nightmare?

Given all the verbiage (see the link list below) about dichloroacetate (DCA) that I’ve spewed into the blogosphere decrying the hijacking of a promising cancer therapy by conspiracy-mongers (it’s the cancer cure “big pharma” is keeping from you because they can’t make money on it) and opportunistic entrepreneurs like Jim Tassanno preying on the desperation […]

Categories
Cancer Medicine Politics Science

NIH budget woes: Spin versus reality

As I mentioned before, I was at the American Association for Cancer Research Meeting in Los Angeles last week. During the meeting, I happened to attend a plenary session talk by the Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), Dr. John Niederhuber, whose topic was the rather dire NCI funding situation. I’ve written about this […]